The wall

akyron said:

"U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at the ports of entry recorded 6,833 inadmissible aliens trying to enter. The Border Patrol, meanwhile, nabbed 18,198 people who had sneaked across the border.

The combined number of 25,031, while the highest under Mr. Trump, is lower than any month under Mr. Obama dating back to December 2011.

When considered on a year-to-year basis, the gains are indeed stunning. In July 2016, the Border Patrol nabbed 33,737 illegal immigrants — 85 percent more than this year’s total."

Illegal immigrants cost taxpayers nearly $750 billion over lifetime: Report

The Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on United States Taxpayers

"This report estimates the annual costs of illegal immigration at the federal, state and local level to be about $113 billion;"

Exclusive - Trump border 'wall' to cost $21.6 billion, take 3.5 years to build: internal report

In a sense the the wall has already been paid for four times over simply by illegal immigration being down by 80%.

And by the lack of money flowing from the US to Mexico by that 80%...they have paid for the wall, enforcement, healthcare. etc. and will continue to do so.

I am acquainted with some architects that sent in proposals to the govt requests for prototypes. They seem quite ready to get this done.

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Excellent post. We should all say thank you for your trouble. Please accept mine.

Attusblack said:

Democrats also voted for a bill that placed 720 miles of fence/barrier along the southern border. It was Obama that failed to build the last 120 miles of it, Trump is doing nothing more than replacing sections with better barrier and requesting the money to finish the remaining 120 miles still owed to the citizens of this country.

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Is that what you think he's doing now

Actual result of a border wall:

prometeus said:

Only dead people and the Martians have not heard about Trump's wall and the countless times he said that Mexico will pay for it.
Having said that, and acknowledging that there are instances where a candidate promises something and then does everything in his/her power to keep that promise and for reasons beyond his/her control fails, what I want to know what exactly did Trump do to have Mexico pay for the wall?
Was there anything else beyond asking Nieto: "Enrique you want to pay for it?" "No?" "OK, but it makes me look bad."
What steps were taken to make Mexico pay for the wall? What was the premise of the negotiation and who was negotiating it? Anyone have any clues?

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"The Wall" is just another misdirection to bring focus on himself. He can always come up with another misdirection, constantly. And the press eats it up. The Bums. Trump is all about himself. He puts up false fronts to further his own Narcissistic self. That's Trump.

katzgar said:

How would Mexico paying for the wall shut our government down

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I don't know if you're a pro-wall individual but we owe it to ourselves to at least have an honest discussion of the situation. There are more than just monetary costs to the wall, there are moral and political costs as well. Not only will the wall be expensive and ineffective, it will create a tone in American foreign policy that will be very much disdained by the rest of the free world. The wall is the political slight of hand that entertains morons but doesn't produce material results. As long as there is a human need bias, our borders will be perforated by tunnels, trucks or, I guarantee you, catapult if they can do it. We cannot separate ourselves from the rest of the world. Walls aren't immigration reform and bigotry is not policy. One day they will celebrate the wall coming down, just as they did in Berlin.

Trump seems willing to play the role of tough guy for his shrinking fan base, however he is really weak not to stand up to bad ideas wherever they originate. If the president can't tell his people where they're wrong, he is condemning himself to be nothing more than a puppet of the polls. That's not leadership. If, on the other hand, he genuinely believes that the wall will control immigration, he is a fool rather than a puppet. Either way, I'm in doubt of his intellect and his courage, not his greed though.